You can't get disability benefits for drug addiction alone, but you can sometimes get disability if you are or were addicted to drugs.

Although
drug addiction often substantially impairs a person’s ability to work,
an applicant will not be approved for disability on the basis of the
drug addiction alone. Even though the effects of substance abuse may prevent an individual from maintaining regular employment, Social Security does not consider substance abuse to be disabling until it causes other irreversible medical conditions. However, this does not mean that you cannot win
approval for a physical or mental condition that was caused by a drug
addiction. The Social Security Administration (SSA) begins all
reviews of claims for disability in the same manner, regardless of the
alleged impairment or its cause.

Basic Eligibility for Disability Benefits

Once you have filed your claim for disability, the SSA must make sure you meet the following basic requirements:

You may not earn $1,130 or more a month from working.

Your condition must be expected to last at least 12 months, and

Your condition must have a severe impact on your ability to work

If you do not meet these basic
requirements, the SSA will automatically deny your claim. However, if
you do meet these basic requirements, the SSA will then determine
whether your illness meets one of the qualifying conditions in the SSA’s
Listing of Impairments. If your illness meets all the criteria of one
of the conditions in these disability listings, your claim for
disability will be automatically approved.

Drug Addiction Disability Listing

Social Security acknowledges that the use of substances can cause medical and mental conditions that cannot be reversed simply by abstaining from the substances. At some point, most substance abusers have irreversible medical or mental problems because of the changes that occur throughout the body from prolonged use of alcohol or narcotics.

Social Security discusses drug
addiction in its disability listing called Substance Addiction Disorders.
To meet the requirements of this listing (12.09), you must have
suffered changes in your behavior or physical health due to your regular
abuse of a drug. The drug can be any prescription or illegal drug that
affected your central nervous system. You must also have a physical or
mental impairment that was caused by the drug abuse, which you must
prove by meeting the listing criteria for one of the following
conditions:

Ongoing Drug Use

If you have been medically
diagnosed with drug addiction, the SSA cannot generally hold this
against you when determining whether you are eligible for disability
because of a physical or mental condition other than drug abuse.
However, if the SSA determined that your illness would go away if you
stopped abusing drugs, the SSA will deny your claim. For instance, if
you have drug-induced hepatitis, the SSA would likely find that it would
go away if you quit using drugs.

However, if the SSA finds that your
quitting drugs would not improve your disabling condition, you could be
granted disability benefits. This could be true if your drug addiction
caused the condition, such as advanced, irreversible liver failure, or
if your drug addiction is unrelated to the condition, such as thyroid
cancer that predated your prescription drug abuse, as long as stopping
the drug use would be irrelevant to your disabling condition.

Representative Payees

If you win your claim for
disability but the SSA believes you are still using drugs, the SSA may
require that you attend treatment for your drug addiction and that you
have a representative payee. A representative payee will receive your
Social Security check and manage your payments on your behalf. The
representative payee can be a person that you trust such as a parent or
it can be a qualified organization. The representative payee is expected
to prevent you from spending the money on drugs. Learn more about representative payees.

What Medical Evidence Do I Need?

The
medical evidence needed to win your claim will depend on what condition
you suffer from as a result of your drug addiction. If you have been
diagnosed with a mental illness, you must provide psychiatric reports,
names and addresses of your treating physicians (this includes social
workers and physician’s assistants), a detailed history of all
hospitalizations, mental health status reports, a list of prescribed
medications and their side effects, and any other information that
supports your claim.

If you suffer from a physical impairment, you
must provide the SSA with the names of your treating physicians,
reports from any diagnostic tests, a complete list of medications and
their side effects, and information about any hospitalizations.

What If I Don’t Meet The Listing Requirements?

If you don’t meet the listing
requirements for one of the above disability listings, it is still
possible to win your claim for disability if you have significant
functional limitations (for example, your doctor says you can walk or
stand only 2 hours per day). If
you suffer from a physical illness, the SSA will assess your residual
functional capacity (RFC) to find out all of the work-related
limitations that result from your impairments. The RFC should describe
how much you can lift or carry, how far you can walk, how long you are
able to sit and stand, and whether there are limits in your ability to
reach, bend, or stoop.

If you suffer from mental illness,
the SSA will assess your mental RFC (MRFC), which discusses your
work-related limitations. For example, if you have difficulty focusing,
following directions, being reliable, getting along with others, or
relating to authority because of your mental illness, the MRFC should
reflect this. An MRFC should also state whether you are currently
suffering from your addiction.

At this stage, the SSA will
determine whether, given your RFC, you can still do your old job despite
your illness. If your only impairment is your drug addiction, the SSA
will find that you can perform your old job and your claim will be
denied. However, if you have multiple conditions that keep you from
working, the SSA will consider your age, education, and past work
experience with the combined effects of your illness to decide if there
is other work you can do. If it finds you can do another job, your claim
will be denied.